Before the Europeans, the coastal strip of Saint Mary was dotted with Taíno villages that lived off fishing, cassava and trade along the north coast. The first Europeans to look upon this part of the island were the Spanish shortly after Columbus's landing in neighboring Saint Ann, in 1494; from that first contact remain Spanish-Portuguese place names that endure to this day, like that of Oracabessa —from 'ear of head' or 'golden head'— and that of the bay of Santa María itself, which Columbus is said to have named around 1502.
Saint Mary was one of the first areas colonized by Spain, and its capital, Port Maria, is among the oldest settlements on the island, barely later than Sevilla la Nueva. During the long and neglected Spanish rule, the region was little more than a cattle and supply stop, but its position on the north coast would make it strategic when England wrested the island from Spain in 1655.
The modern parish was organized under British rule and took shape as one of the divisions of the north coast, with an economy turned first to sugar and, later, to the banana. Its relief of well-watered green hills, crossed by numerous rivers that come down from the mountains to the sea, defined from the start its lush and agricultural character.
At the mouth of the Rio Nuevo, on the coast of Saint Mary, the largest pitched battle in the history of Jamaica was fought between June 25 and 27, 1658. It pitted an English force of some 700 men, between regulars and militiamen, commanded by Colonel Edward D'Oyley, against an invading army of some 560 Spanish soldiers and fifty allies, under the command of the former Spanish governor of the island, Cristóbal Arnaldo de Ysasi.
Ysasi, who resisted accepting the loss of Jamaica, had crossed from Cuba with reinforcements to try to recover it, after a first frustrated attempt the year before at Ocho Rios. At Rio Nuevo he built a fort by the sea, but D'Oyley stormed it and defeated him completely: the Spanish suffered around 450 casualties against some 60 English fallen. It was the largest military engagement ever fought on Jamaican soil.
Rio Nuevo was the last great Spanish attempt to reconquer the island. Ysasi held out for a couple more years in the mountains, supported by former slaves, until in 1660 he fled by canoe to Cuba with his last supporters. Spain would formally cede Jamaica to England in the Treaty of Madrid of 1670. Today the Rio Nuevo Battle Site, in Saint Mary, is a National Heritage Site and preserves the memory of that decisive day.
Saint Mary was the setting of one of the most dramatic episodes of slave resistance in the Caribbean. On Easter Sunday 1760, a slave of Fante origin known as Tacky led near Port Maria an uprising carried out by Coromantee captives who had arrived from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). The rebels took Fort Haldane, in Port Maria, and seized barrels of gunpowder and firearms to equip themselves.
Tacky's Revolt spread to other parishes and came to mobilize more than fifteen hundred people: it was the greatest uprising in the British Caribbean between the 1733 insurrection on Saint John and the Haitian Revolution. It was only suppressed after a hard campaign in which the British resorted to the help of the Maroons, obliged by their treaties to pursue rebel slaves. Tacky died in combat and many of his followers were executed or chose suicide rather than return to slavery.
That insurrection shook the foundations of the plantation system and hardened the slave laws, but it also remained a lasting symbol of the struggle for freedom. Port Maria, with its pretty bay, its colonial buildings and Fort Haldane, preserves the memory of Tacky, today claimed among the great heroes of African resistance in Jamaica.
Saint Mary entered world popular culture through two illustrious neighbors settled in the Oracabessa and Galina area. In 1946, the writer and former British naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming bought land facing the sea and built his Goldeneye estate. There, over the winters of the 1950s and 1960s, he wrote the fourteen novels and stories starring the secret agent James Bond, giving the Jamaican north coast a permanent place in the imagination of the 20th century.
Around Fleming and his neighbor Blanche Blackwell —mother of Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records who would take reggae to the world— a circle of artists and celebrities formed. On the headland of Galina, very close by, the playwright and composer Noël Coward built Firefly, his Jamaican refuge with spectacular views of the Caribbean Sea, where he received Hollywood stars and the British Queen Mother herself.
Firefly is today a museum and National Historic Site, and there the remains of Coward rest. Goldeneye has become an exclusive boutique hotel. Together they make Saint Mary a parish with an unusual literary and glamorous aura, halfway between the rebellion history of Port Maria and the serenity of its bays.
The historic economy of Saint Mary revolved around the plantations. In the early 19th century there came to be more than sixty sugar mills in the parish, but by the end of the century barely three remained: the sugar crisis, after abolition and the fall in prices, sank the old plantation regime. In its place the banana took over, a crop that would transform the landscape and the life of the north coast.
As early as 1887 bananas were being shipped from Port Maria, Annotto Bay and Oracabessa to Europe and North America, and later also from Rio Nuevo and Frankfort. As in neighboring Portland, the 'banana boats' connected the parish with the world and left a lush countryside of bananas, coconut palms, allspice, cocoa and citrus that still defines its interior.
That agricultural past survives in towns and coves of local feel, far removed from the great neighboring tourist hubs. Saint Mary is today one of the quietest parishes on the north coast, ideal for those seeking authentic, rural Jamaica far from the crowds.
Saint Mary is one of the greenest and best-watered parishes on the island, crossed by numerous rivers that descend from the interior mountains toward the sea and hide waterfalls and natural pools among the vegetation. Its coast alternates peaceful bays with little-crowded local beaches, and its interior keeps a deeply rural character.
That combination of lush nature, history of battles and rebellions, and literary glamour gives Saint Mary a singular profile within Jamaica. Compared to the bustle of Ocho Rios, in neighboring Saint Ann, or the romantic air of Portland, the parish offers an experience of calm and authenticity.
Touring Port Maria and its bay, visiting the site of the Battle of Rio Nuevo, looking in on Firefly or Goldeneye and losing yourself along the rural roads among bananas and rivers is a glimpse of a serene and cultured Jamaica, where the memory of African resistance, the mark of the conquest and the echo of the most famous spy novels in the world coexist.